Efax (all lowercase) is a generic abbreviation of “electronic fax,” which is a version of faxing that doesn’t require you to have a physical fax machine or phone line. Other commonly used abbreviations for electronic fax are e-fax, e fax, or efax.
What is Electronic Faxing?
An efax service will let you send and receive an electronic fax from a computer, tablet, or smartphone. Efaxing is far more convenient than traditional faxing because you don’t have to own or have access to a fax machine. All that you need is an electronic device with an internet connection.
In this article, we’ll break down how you can send an efax as well as how sending faxes electronically works. And not only are you able to send faxes, but also receive them!
How Does Sending an Efax Work?
So, how can you fax without a fax machine?
The answer is simple: Use our online fax service! An efax service like Fax.Live acts as the bridge between a physical fax machine and your digital device. Efaxing takes a PDF of the document that you want to fax and transmits it either to your recipient’s fax machine or their fax service.
On the recipient’s end, they won’t be able to tell whether your fax was sent by a real fax machine or through an online fax service. Online faxing makes it incredibly convenient for you to fax documents, as you don’t need to buy a fax machine or go to an office or print shop that has a fax machine.
How Do I ‘E-Fax’? How Do I Send an Electronic Fax?
To send faxes electronically, you’ll need to use a service like Fax.Live. Sending an efax is as simple as:
- Uploading your document to the efax service
- Entering your recipient’s fax number
- Sending your fax!
Sending an efax takes a couple of minutes as your document is transmitted to the remote fax machine or recipient’s online fax service. Fax.Live will let you know the status of your fax and notify you when your document was successfully sent. You can also monitor your sent and received faxes through your fax activity log.
How can I receive a fax electronically?
You can receive faxes using Fax.Live’s electronic fax service. When you set up a Fax.Live account, you’ll have the option to create your unique fax number that acts as your “fax address” that you can use to receive a fax. In the Fax.Live dashboard, you’ll be able to click the Inbox where incoming faxes are stored. All sent and received faxes live in this dashboard as long as your subscription is active, or until you delete them.
Here, we see a list of all the faxes we’ve received, who sent them, and whether they were successfully sent or not. Under the Actions tab, you’re able to download or print the document that you’ve received.
Receiving an efax is even more convenient than receiving faxes via fax machine because the history of all the faxes that you’ve received are stored in one place. If you need to go back and download a past fax, you can simply go back to your inbox.
Can I send a regular fax to an efax number?
Yes, efaxing works with traditional faxing. This is because efaxing still uses a fax machine to transmit documents. If you send a document using a physical fax machine to an efax number, the recipient will still see the fax in their inbox as an electronic document.
Conversely, you can also send an efax to a regular fax machine! Many organizations, like healthcare, education, and the government, still use faxing to transmit documents. If you send them an efax, they’ll receive your document as if you sent it with a fax machine.
There are no restrictions on how you receive and send faxes. As long as you have the recipient’s fax number and they have your fax number, you can send and receive efaxes with no issues.
How Do You Get an Efax Number?
Fax numbers are included with every active Fax.Live account. For a low monthly subscription, you can send and receive faxes and have your own dedicated fax number.
If you’re interested in trying out efaxing, send a free fax today and see how convenient it is to send a fax directly from your computer.
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